Urbanisation as fragilisation? A Systemic View on Some Compelling Issues in Urban Planning and Policies

Urbanisation is expected at keeping galloping (United Nations, 2019), yet our complex and finite world demands to at least question the actual feasibility and desirability of such a phenomenon. As per recent urban applications to tourism and health (Cristiano & Zilio, 2020; 2021), systems thinking (Meadows, 2008) can offer a conceptual framework to interpret and accompany those radical transformations, triggered by global causes like climate change and progressive resource depletion, that unavoidably affect local settlements. The featuring interconnections of urban systems play a crucial role in a globalised world, as recent pandemic and logistic shocks have taught. Shifting from the economic viewpoint of the consumer to the supplier of resources, a systemic study is here offered on the socioecological flows upon which contemporary globalised city depends. The general interconnections with other cities, hinterlands, and remote support areas are outlined: on the one side, dependence and strengthening relations are present; on the other side, the crucial inflows in terms of sustainability and possibility to reproduce urban assets and urban functions as we know them today. A perspective is offered, both material and immaterial, with a local focus that can be connected to the global thanks to a backwards exploration, able to track and – if need be – quantify the memory of energy, materials, labour, and information (Odum, 1996) hiding behind the main flows. Some diagramming is used, based on the energy systems language (ibid.), as a tool to understand and describe urban reality, and more specifically: (a) possible strength and weakness leverage points of a European city, including internal and external feedback loops; (b) its driving goals(s); (c) consequent physical and social formations; and (d) the nature and the robustness of the systemic effects of economic dynamics based on relations, circularity, and reciprocity that may take place, as experimented in some times of crisis. Both inside and outside formal city planning, such information aims at face ongoing urban changes, supporting actions able to intervene on compelling issues – including social iniquity and soil consumption – in a systemic logic that sets off again from the very driving goal of a city, from its function.